The intent of this survey was to find out how Kingston residents viewed alcohol use in their own community. An individual is influenced to drink, or not to drink alcohol by many factors. There is the simple enjoyment of the taste but there are also social and cultural factors, environmental influences and health impacts of drinking alcohol. This survey aimed to discover the strength of some of those influences in the local population. As KFL&A Public Health builds a strategy to discourage the misuse of alcohol, knowing information about the community will help them to gather public support12 and anticipate barriers.
Key findings from the survey sections that dealt with factors that influence drinking are presented below:
Reasons people drink alcohol
Factors that can contribute to community alcohol problems
Extent of alcohol-related issues in Kingston
Second-hand effects of alcohol use
Another objective of the survey was to determine the level of support for various community and policy actions. A two tier approach to policy implementation has been proposed in the literature.13 In this approach, the first tier of policies includes population-level strategies such as alcohol pricing and controlling the physical availability of alcohol. The second tier of policies is oriented to specific situations, behaviours, and contexts. Interventions at this level include programs that reduce drinking and driving, responsible beverage service training, and implementation of the low-risk drinking guidelines. The authors of the two-tier approach suggest that change is required in the first tier for the more common second-tier efforts to be effective.
Key findings from the survey are organized below using the two tier classification of policy initiatives.
Support for Tier 1 strategies - Population Level
Support for Tier 2 strategies - Targeted Interventions
The main limitation of this study is that the sample is not representative of the population it was drawn from, i.e. the City of Kingston. This is a common issue facing telephone surveys. The lack of representativeness is explained by non-response and non-coverage bias. Non-response bias occurs when the people who respond to the survey are different from those who do not respond on variables that are important to what is being studied. Numerous call backs and calling at different times throughout the day were methods used to decrease this bias. Still, the sample obtained was typical of telephone surveys, showing an over representation of older females.
There may also be non-coverage bias as this sample was drawn from people with land lines; people using only cell phone service were not part of the sampling frame. If people who have only cell phones are different in their opinions on alcohol use, then the findings will be biased. Therefore the findings cannot be generalized to the Kingston population.
Other survey methods (e.g. online) are being investigated to engage those segments of the population that are under-represented. If another survey is conducted in the future, the findings would augment these and would be included as an addendum.